This is a monthly update where I share what I’ve been working on recently. For the previous installment, check out my July 2023 Update.

I’m riding high right now! A couple relatively large teams have signed up recently, and a prospect I talked to last year is evaluating Teaminal for a 60-seat deal! Exciting times.

Also it looks like I forgot to write a post last month, so this will be a double-update for August and September.

Slack App Directory

I finally resubmitted Teaminal to the Slack App Directory! I originally submitted it back in December but got rejected with a few specific requests, which I think I’ve resolved:

• Update my privacy policy to add some GDPR language
• Show the permissions we’re going to ask for in the app and explain why we need them
• Add a Slack-specific page to the marketing site that I can link to from the app listing

Fingers crossed I’ll be approved this time!

Marketing site updates

I did a bunch of work on the marketing site:

• Updated screenshots to include reacji, which I added to the app in July
• Removed the map graphic and added a new comparison section below pricing
• Added a toggle to see either Teaminal UI or Slack UI screenshots

The last one especially seemed like it was tripping people up - they weren’t sure if Teaminal was a Slack app or a standalone app. I’m hoping this will help.

Bitbucket Integration

The prospect I mentioned at the top is using Bitbucket, so I added a Bitbucket integration to make it easier for them to evaluate Teaminal. So now you can connect your Bitbucket account and see recent pull requests in the app for status updates and retros.

How I stack up

Related to the prospect at the top, they’d be migrating from Status Hero, so I did a little comparison to make sure Teaminal was a viable alternative for them, and it was interesting to take a look at the differences between the two prdoucts:

• Status Hero DMs each person (respecting their timezone) and asks them for their update, Teaminal just posts in a channel
• Status Hero posts a summary after everyone’s shared updates, Teaminal doesn’t share a summary but does update the original message with who has/hasn’t participated
• Status Hero sends updates to a thread in response to the standup reminder, Teaminal just posts in a channel
• Status Hero asks about goals and blockers, Teaminal is just a single text input
• Status Hero has a dashboard that updates each day, Teaminal is more of a timeline of updates

As a result of this comparison, I’m revisiting my Slack integration, threading status updates below the standup reminder, thinking about exactly what I want to show in the standup reminder, and adding slash-commands like /status and /retro.

Fixes & Improvements

I also shipped one small improvement:

• Updated the retro color picker to be a dropdown instead of a color swatch

Next month

In October I’m going to be making those Slack changes I mentioned, adding PagerDuty and Google Calendar integrations, and doing a major refactor of the codebase to make it easier to add even more integrations.

Update: The October 2023 Update is the next post in this series.